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International Journal of Chinese Linguistics
Vol. 4:2 (2017) ► pp.191–256

Mandarin associative plural -men and NPs with -men

| University of Hawai‘i at Ma̅noa

This paper discusses the syntax and semantics of -men and four types of phrases containing -men in Mandarin. I defend the view that -men should be analyzed as a plural morpheme as first argued in Li (1999) but argue against the analysis of positing -men in the D position or treating it as a definite determiner. It will be shown that definiteness is not inherent to -men and that -men is compatible with numerals and classifiers and should be in a position local to nouns. I propose an analysis of -men as an associative plural and explain the properties of the four types of expressions containing -men within a Neocarlsonian account of bare nominals. The formal account of the syntax and semantics of phrases containing -men advanced in this paper shows that it is not necessary to assume a functional category D that is always invisible in the grammar of Mandarin in order to account for the behaviors of its nominal arguments and argues for the lack of DP projections in Mandarin.

Keywords: Mandarin, -men , plurality, numerals, classifiers, DP, associative plurals, (in)definite
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous analyses, challenges and additional properties of -men
    • 2.1Previous analyses of -men
    • 2.2Challenges for the DP analysis of -men
      • 2.2.1Group classifiers and -men
      • 2.2.2Individual classifiers and -men
      • 2.2.3-Men marked common nouns in the pre-classifier position
    • 2.3Two less addressed properties of phrases containing -men
      • 2.3.1[N-men Num cl]: Its appositive nature
      • 2.3.2N-men: Its generic reading
    • 2.4Section summary
  • 3.-Men as an associative plural marker
    • 3.1Theoretical background: The Neocarlsonian account of bare nominals
    • 3.2Mandarin -men as an associative plural
    • 3.3N-men
    • 3.4The [Num cl N-men] phrase
    • 3.5The numerical approximation construction [Num-approximation cl N-men]
      • 3.5.1Structure and semantics of numerical approximation using ji/duo
      • 3.5.2Structure and semantics of [Num-approximation cl N-men]
    • 3.6The appositive phrase containing -men [N-men Num cl (person)]
    • 3.7Section summary
  • 4.Variation among speakers and remaining issues
    • 4.1Method
    • 4.2Results
    • 4.3General discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijchl.16015.jia
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